FIRST THERE was the pizza renaissance. Now there’s the pasta renaissance, with star chefs all over the city and beyond using their noodles to dazzle diners.

“My intention was to take an Italian staple and execute it with a little more reverence,” says Scarpetta chef Scott Conant, whose West 14th Street kitchen offers up one of the city’s best examples of refined but accessible pasta.

This is an era where a dish as seemingly simple as Conant’s spaghetti with tomato and basil is rightfully recognized as one of the city’s most transporting plates of food. It’s a time when Locanda Verde chef Andrew Carmellini, whose always packed TriBeCa eatery goes through over 2,000 lamb meatball sliders a week, is planning an all-you-can-eat pasta night in his back room.

And over in Midtown, there’s chef Michael White, who serves both the heaviest of meat sauces and the most delicate seafood with his exemplary pastas at Alto, Convivio and Marea. White’s three restaurants serve 6,000 to 8,000 plates of pasta per week combined and employ a total of seven full-time pasta makers.

“They make better pasta than in Italy,” White says while showing us his underground pasta bunker at Alto.

White’s team is all about “method and technique,” ensuring that every piece of handmade pasta is of uniform quality.

Not surprisingly, this weekend’s New York City Wine & Food Festival is full of Italian flavor. There’s a late-night party on Saturday at Scarpetta, where Conant will serve his spaghetti and other dishes including cavatelli with braised rabbit.

And on Sunday, there’s Meatball Madness. Festival founder Lee Brian Schrager wanted to do “a very New York event.” He originally dreamed of a pizza party but realized there was no way to replicate all of the city’s unique pizza ovens. So, he opted for meatballs and tapped Giada De Laurentiis to host the event.

The 29 chefs who will prepare meatballs include Carmellini, White and Stephen Kalt, formerly of TriBeCa’s beloved Spartina.

Kalt now serves standout dishes like veal osso bucco ravioli at the new Fornelletto inside Atlantic City’s Borgata resort. And he’s been looking around NYC for restaurant spaces.

Why wouldn’t he? Everything from the old Merkato 55 space to the former Wakiya space is turning into an Italian restaurant, joining a crowded field including the new SD26, A Voce and Casa Lever eateries. New York’s got plenty of pasta joints, no doubt, but it seems to be hungry for more.